Emil Lederer and Joseph Schumpeter on Economic Growth,Technology and Business Cycles

This paper compares Joseph Schumpeter and Emil Lederer with respect to their visions concerning the notions of economic growth, technology and business cycles. Their theoretical investigations in a number of thematic areas seem to converge to similar views. More precisely, both Schumpeter and Lederer regard the capitalist economy as a dynamic system where the introduction of innovations is its distinctive characteristic. In such a system, static analysis based on the concept of equilibrium is useful as an expository device to describe the adjustment mechanisms of the economic system. They also paid attention to the emergence of large oligopolistic firms and considered this development as being interwoven with technological progress. Both economists used similar arguments to emphasize the link between economic development and technological change. In their analyses, Schumpeter and Lederer referred to psychological factors motivating the entrepreneur, in order to explain the forces that set in motion the process of innovation and thus economic development. The concept of technological unemployment is also described in a similar manner by both of them. Regarding the issue of business cycles, Schumpeter and Lederer considered them to be a result of endogenous processes within a capitalist economy. Lederer in his late works, argued in a way analogous to Schumpeter, that economic fluctuations are caused from the disruptions created by innovations, which are introduced discontinuously into the economic system. Conclusively, Schumpeter and Lederer delivered theses which are similar in scope and conclusions probably because they were developed in the same social, political, theoretical and ideological environment and were also well acquainted with each other’s ideas.     

Great moderation or “Will o’ the Wisp”? A time–frequency decomposition of GDP for the US and UK

In this paper the relationship between the growth of real GDP components at different cycle lengths is explored in the frequency domain using discrete wavelet analysis. This analysis is done for both the US and the UK using quarterly data, and the results reveal interesting differences between the two countries. One of the key findings is that the “great moderation” shows up only at certain frequencies, and not in all components of real GDP. A second result is that the great moderation appears to have shifted cyclical power from shorter and business cycles to long cycles, which has important implications for both policy formulation and the probability of less frequent but more severe economic crises. We use these results to explain why the incidence of the great moderation has been so ephemeral across GDP components, countries and time periods. This also explains why it has been so hard to detect periods of moderation (or otherwise) reliably in the aggregate data.     

Micro and macro dynamics: Industry life cycles,inter-sector coordination and aggregate growth

Technological change directly affects economic growth by exploiting and exploring technological opportunities, thus determining productivity growth and income. However, technological change also affects the composition of the economic system, which itself constitutes an important prerequisite for economic growth. The first aim of this paper is to show that the growing variety of the economic system, determined by the emergence of new products and services and leading to new industrial sectors, can allow the long term continuation of economic development, even when the employment creating capacity of individual sectors falls. The second aim is to illustrate the impact of micro variables on the meso-level, that is, on the sectoral composition of an economy, as well as on its macro-economic performance.      

Cycles in basic innovations

Basic innovations are believed to be one of the drivers of economic growth. In this paper we examine if cycle periods found for economic data correspond with cycles in basic innovations. For an annual time series of count data on innovations covering 1764-1976, we fit a harmonic Poisson regression model. We find the presence of multiple cycles with periods 5, 13, 24, 34 and 61, and these show a remarkable resemblance with commonly found economic cycles.     

窜货的成因及其对策研究:基于博弈论的视角

在我国企业的分销渠道建设中往往会遇到窜货现象。它是现代市场营销中经常遇到的一种行为,这种行为对渠道成员和产品制造商的伤害极大。对窜货现象进行剖析后,我们可以看出,产生窜货的原因多种多样。很多学者都对窜货现象的形成原因作了分析并撰写了文章。他们对窜货的形成原因进行分析时大多是从产品、价格、分销和促销这四个方面进行分析的。本文在对窜货的形成原因进行分析时应用博弈理论对窜货现象进行了分析并在分析的基础上提出了如何预防和避免窜货现象的对策。     

关于商品对人类福利贡献的研究

毫无疑问，商品消费在人类福利的实现过程中发挥着非常重要的作用。但是，商品并不总对我们的福利有贡献，其甚至会使我们的福利受损。因此，随之产生的问题便是：“商品是如何及在什么条件下对我们的福利有贡献？”本文即试图从哲学视角回答这两个问题且形成一些政策建议。福利通常被定义为一个人的利益所在。然而，对什么是一个人的利益所在却有着不同的解释。根据福利的偏好满足观，我们想要的便是对我们有益的；实体价值观意味着一些客观、可确定的价值是对每一个人都有益的；享乐主义则认为愉快是唯一的实体价值。我认为，要为福利做出任何可信的阐释，个人偏好必须在其中发挥重要的作用；特别是只有在我们的终极偏好得以实现时，它才会对福利作出贡献。工具性偏好也许是错误的，它或许会导致人们终极目标的落空。基于对福利的讨论，本文考察了商品和福利之间的联系。我们不太可能对商品有终极性偏好，因此，我们或不会因自己的选择而降低了自身的福祉。在现实生活中，我们却观察到因商品消费而致使福利损失的现象，例如，食用变质食品而得病。可见，我们尤为关心的是一件商品所提供的特质而非直接的商品的本身。当然，即使一件商品包含了被冀望得到的特质，对该商品的消费也不总会提高福利，原因在于我们有可能缺乏使用这些对我们有益的属性的能力。一言以蔽之，我们通过消费而旨在实现的实际上是那些有价值的机能（functionings）。我们的生活恰恰由这些“存在（beings）”和“活动（doings）”组成，其质量也就可以通过机能的质量来判断。机能是我们终极偏好的目标，而商品只是实现终极偏好的工具。这里关于商品对人类福利贡献的解释可成功地用以处理各种可能出现的目标。我们不需进一步论述机能和福利之间的关系：愉快不是我们一生追求的全部，它更应被看作是一种特定的机能。类似地，对于自由、能力等概念，我们都可以有同样的理解。商品从不会直接影响我们的福利。换言之，存在内在价值的商品也会在工具层面有益于我们，因为前者贡献了某些有价值的机能。总之，商品对人类福利的作用并不受制于福利诠释的选择；在福利的实体价值观和偏好满足观框架中，这一逻辑是成立的。为使商品对福利有积极、正面的贡献，消费过程须满足两个条件。首先，商品需具备贡献有价值的机能的特性；其次，消费者将这些特性转换成有价值机能的能力。理解这些条件有助于我们形成提高消费者福利水平的政策。在商品供应充足的情况下，政策的首要目标必须是向消费者提供信息和教育，从而使之能够作出有效的选择。如果人们被剥夺了基本机能（如营养或健康），公共权力部门会经常性地直接向其提供必需的商品。他们必须确保解决这些根本问题的方法是最有效的，而且在商品提供过程中还应兼顾社会和文化结构等背景因素的影响。对商品和福利之间的关系进行详尽的考察可以让我们学到很多东西。消费者理论中消费者对商品信息完全掌握的假设事实上已将选择与福利视为等价，它忽视了消费过程中减少福利的所有问题。当我们允许这些问题发生时，我们才会明白这些错误到底是来自何处。福利的偏好满足的哲学理念及其实际应用都存在着一个关键问题：人们经常想得到的和最终选择的事物往往对他们毫无益处。本文的研究表明，这一问题通常因缺乏信息和能力而起。增进对商品的了解会提高改福利；不过，商品只是消费过程中的一个因素，政府更应关注商品的特定属性及人们应用这些属性的能力。     

Minsky Goes to Buffalo—and Takes on the Economics Establishment

This essay is based on remarks presented by the author at The Fourth Bi-Annual Cross-Border Post Keynesian Conference, Buffalo State College, on October 9, 2009. It addresses the economic challenges facing Buffalo, New York, and countless other American cities, especially in the Northeast and Midwest; draws on the writings of Hyman Minsky to offer an interpretation of what many now call the Great Recession, which began in late 2007; and challenges the image of Minsky presented by mainstream economists and journalists, with special attention to a recent lecture by Paul Krugman. The essay closes by returning to Buffalo, where—as Minsky anticipated in the 1990s—the economic fate of working families depends largely on the outcome of a national struggle over the shape of future U.S. economic transformation.     

Bitcoin for energy commodities before and after the December 2013 crash: diversifier,hedge or safe haven?

We study the relationship between Bitcoin and commodities by assessing the ability of Bitcoin to act as a diversifier, hedge, or safe haven against daily movements in commodities in general, and energy commodities in particular. We focus on energy commodities because energy, in the form of electricity, is an essential input in the Bitcoin production. For the entire period, results show that Bitcoin is a strong hedge and a safe-haven against movements in both commodity indices. We further examine whether that ability is also present for non-energy commodities and our analysis show insignificant results when energy commodities are excluded from the general commodity index. We also account for the December 2013 Bitcoin price crash and our results reveal that Bitcoin hedge and safe-haven properties against commodities and energy commodities are only present in the pre-crash period, whereas in the post-crash period Bitcoin is no more than a diversifier. In addition to uncovering the time-varying role of Bitcoin, we highlight the dissimilarity in the dynamic correlations between the extreme downward and extreme upward movements.     

Existence and Welfare Properties of Equilibrium in an Exchange Economy with Multiple Divisible and Indivisible Commodities and Linear Production Technologies

In this paper we consider a class of economies with a finite number of divisible commodities, linear production technologies, and indivisible goods and a finite number of agents. This class contains several well-known economies with indivisible goods and money as special cases. It is shown that if the utility functions are continuous on the divisible commodities and are weakly monotonic both on one of the divisible commodities and on all the indivisible commodities, if each agent initially owns a sufficient amount of one of the divisible commodities, and if a “no production without input”-like assumption on the production sector holds, then there exists a competitive equilibrium for any economy in this class. The usual convexity assumption is not needed here. Furthermore, by imposing strong monotonicity on one of the divisible commodities we show that any competitive equilibrium is in the core of the economy and therefore the first theorem of welfare also holds. We further obtain a second welfare theorem stating that under some conditions a Pareto efficient allocation can be sustained by a competitive equilibrium allocation for some well-chosen redistribution of the total initial endowments. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D4, D46, D5, D51, D6, D61.     

Can ice cream be money?: Perishable medium of exchange

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that a perishable good may be used as commodity money, even in economies in which perfectly durable commodities are available. This is shown in the general context of a search-theoretical model of a decentralized economy.     

Africa Rising? Short-Term Growth vs. Deep Institutional Concerns*

Research on development has moved away from short-term performance to long-term determinants of success. This paper identifies historical factors that shaped the development of key institutions, the degree to which these institutions affected past economic outcomes and, more importantly, which ones are influencing contemporary performance. We first look at the trend in long-term economic performance for the continent compared with other regions of the world. The paper then evaluates the various explanations provided by the standard development model to explain this performance for Africa. The paper shows that the most important long-term determinant of economic and social performance in the continent has been the nature of the distribution of power, which shaped the distribution of economic resources. Furthermore, the paper argues that the distribution of power and the institutions that ensure this distribution were shaped by a number of historical events whose impact still endures.     

Testing for deterministic and stochastic cycles in macroeconomic time series

In this paper we use a statistical procedure which is appropriate to test for deterministic and stochastic (stationary and nonstationary) cycles in macroeconomic time series. These tests have standard null and local limit distributions and are easy to apply to raw time series. Monte Carlo evidence shows that they perform relatively well in the case of functional misspecification in the cyclical structure of the series. As an example, we use this approach to test for the presence of cycles in US real GDP.      

Environmental tax policy in a model of growth cycles

Summary. The purpose of this paper is to consider environmental taxation which would control emissions of firms in a model of growth cycles. In the model presented below, the economy may experience two phases of growth and environmental quality: “the no-innovation growth regime” and “the innovation-led growth regime”. Aggregate capital and environmental quality remain constant in the no-innovation growth regime, while they perpetually increase in the innovation-led growth regime. The paper shows that the tax plays a key role in determining whether the economy stably converges to one of the two regimes or fluctuates permanently between them. It also shows that there is a critical level of the tax and that the economy obtains higher growth rates of capital and environmental quality by raising (or reducing) the tax if the initial tax is below (or above) the critical level. Received: April 2, 2001; revised version: March 21, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" This research reported here was conducted within the research project “Project on Intergenerational Equity” at Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University. I am deeply grateful to an anonymous referee for his or her insightful comments, which greatly improved the paper. I also thank Hiroshi Honda, Yasuo Maeda, Yuji Nakayama, and participants in workshops at Hitotsubashi University, Kyoto University, Nagoya University, Osaka University, University of Tsukuba, Yokohama National University, and University of Tokyo for their valuable comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors are mine.     

商品生产、流通、消费连续性及其会计核算连续性分析

在会计主体假设下,商品生产、流通、消费的会计核算一般不具有连续性。而商品生产、流通、消费是前后逻辑相关的连续过程,若以商品为主体来分析,商品生产、流通、消费的会计核算在逻辑上也具有连续性,并可全面完整反映商品的会计核算,保证会计信息的可靠、相关、全面。     

Characterizing the Vickrey combinatorial auction by induction

This note studies the allocation of heterogeneous commodities to agents whose private values for combinations of these commodities are monotonic by inclusion. This setting can accommodate the presence of complementarity and substitutability among the heterogeneous commodities. By using induction logic, we provide an alternative proof of Holmstrom’s (Econometrica 47:1137–1144, 1979) characterization of the Vickrey combinatorial auction as the unique efficient, strategy-proof, and individually rational allocation rule on a smoothly connected domain of value profiles. Our approach is elementary, not involving smoothness, and intuitive in the sense that familiar properties of the single-item second-price auction provide the first step in our induction on the number of auctioned items. Moreover, our method of proof can be applied to domains which may not be smoothly connected, including nonconvex ones. The authors acknowledge the helpful comments of anonymous referee. Serizawa greatly benefited from discussion with Rajat Deb.     

Capacity constraints, asymmetries, and the business cycle

We study how an occasionally binding capacity constraint affects the properties of business cycles. A real business cycle model is constructed where production takes place at individual plants and the number of plants operated varies over the cycle. The capacity constraint binds in states where all plants are operated. We derive the aggregate production function for this economy, which turns out to differ from the standard Cobb–Douglas function while retaining its desirable properties. The business cycle features of this one-sector growth model are similar to those of a standard real business cycle model in most respects. Our model does, however, display some properties of actual economies that standard models do not. In particular, business cycles in our model are asymmetric—troughs are deeper on average than peaks are tall. Also, labor's share of income is counter-cyclical, as it is in US data.